Logical Heart nodded. "They are all the same inside, so just choose whichever stone suits you," he said.

Ais.h.i.+n chose a smooth dark grey stone, and counted out approximately 20,000 worth of coin in various sizes of coin hearts.

Logical Heart looked at the coin. "That's only enough to cover the material cost," he protested with embarra.s.sment.

"I'm a bit low on coin at the moment," Ais.h.i.+n said, and poured out the rest of his coins, including what he'd collected from the patisserie. Danika's appraisal valued them at about 5,300 coin, and Ais.h.i.+n asked, "Will this be enough?"

Logical Heart sighed, but agreed, "Sure. The activation word for that one is 'darkheart'."

Ais.h.i.+n touched the stone and repeated, "darkheart." He vanished.

Danika watched the s.p.a.ce where he'd stood a bit worriedly when he didn't immediately reappear. Even Logical Heart started to glance at the stone worriedly after another long minute pa.s.sed.

Danika asked hesitantly, "Should I try it?"

Ais.h.i.+n finally reappeared before Logical Heart answered her. "It took me a bit to figure out the exit, but it's perfect," Ais.h.i.+n said laughingly when he saw their worried faces. He no longer carried the cage full of fairy mice.

"You just touch the center stone and say 'exit'," Logical Heart protested. He covered his face and mumbled, "I forgot to tell you that didn't I?"

Ais.h.i.+n and Danika both nodded.

While Logical Heart crafted the enchanted contract, Ais.h.i.+n asked, "Mind a suggestion?"

"Depends on what you suggest," the gnome answered logically.

"Make a deal with one of the good equipment merchants to sell them on commission, even if you have to double the price to make the same profit, I think they'd probably sell a lot better. I'd probably never have stopped to ask why you were selling plain rocks," Ais.h.i.+n explained.

"Oh," Logical Heart replied thoughtfully.

"That's actually a pretty good idea," Danika agreed. "But why are you trying to sell them like this in the first place? As an enchanter who works with s.p.a.ce enchantments, shouldn't you be able to create portals for people if you need coin?"

Logical Heart groaned and said sourly, "If I have to enchant one more portal this week I'm reincarnating on the combat path!"

"That seems like a waste, when you're the first Genius ranked player that I've seen yet," Ais.h.i.+n commented.

Danika gazed at the gnome with wide eyes, and he shrugged.

"Anyway," Logical Heart said, "I'm pretty sure I'm the first person to a.s.semble a storage s.p.a.ce enchantment this way into a habitable s.p.a.ce, so I made as many as I could. I figured that they'd sell easily, but practically no one even stops to ask. I'll try your suggestion and talk to some of the merchants in our guild." He held out the finished contract to Danika. "Touch this and declare your agreement," he instructed.

Danika glanced over the contract quickly and said firmly, "I agree!"

"You should have read the whole thing first," Ais.h.i.+n scolded.

Danika looked up at him and blinked. "I did," she replied. "I owe him 20,000 coin when it's finished, and he promised to complete it within a week, which was written as a month in the game's time."

--

The portal to the elven capital was rimmed in entwined vines. The dais was a busy one, as people entered and exited the portal in a fairly steady flow. Each person who entered reached out a hand to touch the s.h.i.+mmering s.p.a.ce and paused before stepping through.

Ais.h.i.+n waited for ZipZing to go through first, and she discovered that the pause had been for the system notification that popped up and asked: "Spend 1 Karma to teleport to Tamworth?"

Danika accepted, and a moment later she was hovering with the portal behind her, looking out at a new place. Like the elven wizard in the beginner's vale, the elven city was beautiful and yet cla.s.sically elven. Anyone who read many fantasy stories or played many RPGs would look at it and think 'elven city!'

Ais.h.i.+n exited the portal beside her and stepped forward into the path where several elves and a human were waiting patiently for their turns. Danika zipped forward, and gave them an apologetic nod.

The elven capital didn't have a market square the way the human one had, but it did have a market district. Most of the elegant buildings with their various organic designs had hanging signs with elegant curling script. The script looked strangely familiar and Danika commented, "I thought that language was copywritten."

"That just means you know who to pay if you want to use it. It's easy for a company that can build enormous computers in s.p.a.ce, and then dedicate one to a game just to show the world what their hardware can do," Ais.h.i.+n pointed out.

He seemed to be searching for a particular shop. "Can you read these signs?" Danika questioned.

Ais.h.i.+n nodded, and a pa.s.sing elf pointed to ZipZing and exclaimed, "Varya onna!"

"Inwilis rámalócë," another elf replied.

Danika pulled up her menus and used her lens on them. The first speaker had been a player, and the one who answered was an NPC. "You have to be able to speak elvish to play an elf?" Danika questioned.

The elven player gasped. "You can talk!" the elf replied in ordinary words.

Ais.h.i.+n laughed and asked Danika teasingly, "What makes you so sure that we're speaking the same language? This game is played world-wide and even normal translators these days are pretty fast."

The other player actually answered her question, "I can't speak elvish, but my character speaks it so I can activate the skill for as long as I wish. It's a little strange since there's a faint echo, but I think they only left that in to let us know which language we're speaking in, normally I speak in German like you do."

Danika eyed the elf with wide eyed surprise. She knew about five words of German. She wasn't certain that Ais.h.i.+n and the strange elf weren't teasing her, and flicked her menus over to the game site. She'd known it was a global server, but she'd just expected that to mean that she would probably meet people who spoke other languages during her adventures.

While Danika was busy with her menus, Ais.h.i.+n asked the elf, "Do you know where the largest pet shop is by any chance?"

The official game site said only that every player would be able to speak the common language and nothing about voice translation, but the help section had a long string of specific enquiries. Danika closed her menus as the elf answered with shock, "You can't sell people!"

Danika frowned. "Are fairy mice people?" she asked worriedly.

"He meant you," Ais.h.i.+n corrected laughingly.

"Oh, yeah, you can't sell me," Danika agreed, but then she hesitated, thinking of her egg, and added, "hopefully. I'll object."

Ais.h.i.+n laughed while the elf stared at them both. After a moment he pointed in a direction. "That way, beside the meadow," the elf said. Without another word he hurried off in the direction he'd been headed when they all stopped.